Updated: SpaceX has delayed launching NASA’s latest satellite

Update: SpaceX has scrubbed the launch for now due to issues with the rocket’s guidance, navigation and control.

The team is now working towards a launch window on Wednesday 18 April. Stay tuned for more details.

NASA’s newest satellite was scheduled to launch on the evening of Monday 16 April, 22:32 UTC.

Known as TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will play a crucial role in humanity’s search for planets outside our own Solar System. And it’ll be blasted into orbit by SpaceX’s famous, reusable Falcon 9 rocket.

Shortly after the launch, SpaceX will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage on a robotic ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

When the times comes, you can watch it all via the NASA livestream below:

This launch is a big deal because TESS is a very important part of NASA’s future space exploration plans.

TESS is the successor to NASA’s much-loved Kepler space telescope, which has found almost two-thirds of the more than 3,700 exoplanets we currently know about.

TESS will use the same process to spot planets outside our Solar System – staring at stars and watching for tiny dips in their brightness which indicate a planet is orbiting in front of them.

But while Kepler could only look at a small patch of the night sky at one time, TESS will be able to cover 24-degree segments of the sky at once – which means all up it would be able to hunt for alien planets in 85 percent of the visible night sky.

Not only will it be capable of hunting down any old exoplanets, TESS has the important role of looking for rocky planets that orbit relatively close to their Sun, similar to Earth.